


in a language that you can't read (just yet)

by piggy09



Series: Obscure Word Fics [6]
Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Gen, Helena warnings, Possessive Behavior
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-01
Updated: 2014-02-01
Packaged: 2018-01-10 19:15:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 745
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1163455
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/piggy09/pseuds/piggy09
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Still, you press your fingers to your lips and pretend that they are Sarah’s. You pretend that she has let you get close enough to rest your fingers gentle trembling on her beautiful face. Like when your fingers were a knife against her lips, except she isn’t afraid, in your head. She understands, in your head, that you want to know exactly how her lips would move around the words so that you can say them like her, so you can be like her, so you can be as good as her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	in a language that you can't read (just yet)

**Author's Note:**

> From two prompts on Tumblr:  
> "Helena & Sarah | Cheiloproclitic: being attracted to someones lips. But like Helena attraction not romantic attraction."  
> "Helena & Sarah | Lalochezia: the use of abusive language to relieve stress or ease pain."
> 
> The first one is emphasized more than the second, but they're both there.

Sometimes when you are sitting alone you remember the first time you met Sarah.

This is an important memory! You hold it very, very close and you only bring it out when it is necessary. You are afraid of it wearing thin, the way Kira’s letter smudged in your fingers. (Your fingers ruin everything they touch.) But when it is necessary you lie there and close your eyes and remember that great bloom of _rightness_ that shuddered to life between your ribs when she said _I’m-not-Beth_.

(To your mind it smells of the motorcycle and sounds like that thrumming. Your memory gets as tangled as your hair, except no one is there to comb it out. Just you, and your heart going _brum_ -brum-brum.)

Sometimes you whisper those three wonderful words to yourself like a prayer. From your mouth they sound wrong and twisted. Your lips don’t shape them right.

_I’m._

_Not._

_Beth._

Still, you press your fingers to your lips and pretend that they are Sarah’s. You pretend that she has let you get close enough to rest your fingers gentle trembling on her beautiful face. Like when your fingers were a knife against her lips, except she isn’t afraid, in your head. She understands, in your head, that you want to know exactly how her lips would move around the words so that you can say them like her, so you can be like her, so you can be as good as her. You can hear the way she would say them, now, pretending she doesn’t care. Her eyes rolling in a different way than fear.

You just can’t – her lips aren’t right. In your mind her lips are yours and that is _wrong_.

The idea of any part of you touching Sarah makes your stomach roll over and over. It makes you sick. You are a broken thing. Sarah is not. All the broken pieces of you are whole in Sarah. She was not made for a purpose, forged like a blade. She has probably never handled a blade.

She doesn’t need to.

Sarah uses words the way you were taught to use weapons. _You must do it quickly_ , Tomas had said, _so that they will not have time to cry for help. The loss of innocent lives for these abominations would be_ sin _, child._

Secretly, you’d thought: _sharp enough to not hurt. Quick enough to not hurt._

Sarah’s words are sharp, sharp, sharp as your rusted blade in her hand and just as stained with your (her) ( _our_ ) blood. They are blades. They are bullets in a gun, loaded with fingers that do not shake and placed up against your head.

Sarah, you’ve found, is far too experienced with putting a gun to your head.

You don’t try to sound out the words she uses, in the dark. That day you knocked glasses out of the cabinet in a beautiful arc of splintered glass: _fucking idiot_. When you tried to cook but burned what you tried: _shithead_. Afterwards you didn’t let yourself think of Sarah at all, the way her lips twisted so beautifully around the sharp and jagged words, the way you wanted to see what they tasted like. You curled in on yourself and hurt yourself the way words couldn’t, so you could be right again. So you could be someone Sarah trusted.

All you want is for Sarah to trust you, and hold you, and stroke your hair and murmur beautiful things with her lips against your skin. You hold your eyes wide open in the dark, trembling, to prepare for the day when she will let you break her down. Every part of her. You won’t blink. You promise yourself, over and over: you will not blink. You are certain that someday Sarah will let you love her right, just as certain as you were when you knew you would be friends. But a fear is growing that someday, after that, she will leave. You can’t stop her from leaving again. She wouldn’t let you.

Someday it will be just you in the dark again. And you will dream of Sarah, and put your fingers to your lips, and say _I love you I love you I love you_. Your lips will move right, you’re certain. It will be just like Sarah is saying it.

As long as you can convince yourself Sarah loves you, you will be alright.

You will be alright.

You will be alright.

**Author's Note:**

> How I wish you could see the potential,  
> the potential of you and me.  
> It's like a book elegantly bound but  
> in a language that you can't read   
> just yet.  
> \--"I Will Possess Your Heart," Death Cab for Cutie
> 
> ...Lyrics taken out of context for this one, referring more to the fact that Helena can't decipher Sarah rather than Sarah can't decipher the relationship between the two of them. Still: the lyrics fit both in and out of context, I think.


End file.
